An innovative approach to banking has enabled Coutts and Co in particular to thrive since its inception more than 300 years ago. The bank of choice for Her Majesty The Queen, Coutts has a commitment to continually bring the latest offerings in banking and support for its 70,000 global customers.

As Coutts operates as part of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) group, ensuring quality of service to its clients worldwide is a top priority. RBS has a heavy focus on innovation and scouts the globe to identify companies and technologies that may be of service to the bank and its customers needs.

During one such innovation exploration, RBS identified a gap between physical face-to-face client to relationship manager meetings and telephone calls. They believed that real-time video communications could add significant value by facilitating face-to-face contact when a physical meeting was not possible.

The bank chose to use the OpenTok platform, built on top of WebRTC, to help them fill that gap. To improve an already strong client experience online, RBS needed a platform that would embed seamlessly into their existing web interface, all while being compatible with the business logic and processes they’ve fine tuned over the years.

Four areas in particular were very important to RBS:

1. Ease of collaboration:

OpenTok is embedded directly into a Coutts’ web page. Clients are not required to sign up for a new account or download any plugins. A wealth manager simply shares a secure and unique meeting URL with their client. They can now have real time conversations with their wealth manager anytime, from anywhere.

2. Multi-party support:

Not all client calls are between two parties. The capability to add in an additional expert from another location, or even a co-signatory, was of great interest from a client experience perspective. OpenTok enabled RBS to develop an experience that brought in additional customer service managers and experts with the click of a button – not holding or waiting around. The ability to do this without interruption of flow of conversation particularly impressed RBS.

3. Identity:

In the case of RBS, and many companies, identity is of prime concern. Ensuring who you’re speaking to is the account holder, and being able to manage credentials associated with that account by the bank is part of RBS’s commitment to client security. With OpenTok, all user data is anonymized. End user data including logins, IP addresses, identities, additional account information and more are never shared with TokBox. The OpenTok platform provided RBS with the flexibility to create the required levels of identity management to reassure the client and RBS itself that the communication channel was an authentic link to the correct people.

4. Security:

Linking in with identity management, ensuring a client’s account security over the internet – particularly when concerning finances – is paramount to RBS. The OpenTok platform has been certified as Safe Harbor compliant by a third party auditing agency, TRUSTe. OpenTok provides security at multiple levels, including restricting endpoint access to OpenTok sessions, providing a role-based security model, and securing the basic voice and video traffic that moves through the OpenTok cloud and between endpoints. In addition, OpenTok is compatible with third party platforms that can provide extra complementary layers of security to your application.

With these four key points covered, and the additional functionality delivered by the platform proving attractive, implementing OpenTok was the ideal choice.

Differentiating their service in the highly competitive world of banking is key, and OpenTok’s capabilities offered an exciting feature set for its clients. The Coutts Client Video Meeting Portal service launched in mid November 2014 to a selected pilot group of wealth managers and private bankers who promoted this to their clients, drawing significant interest. The rollout attracted coverage in the UK national press, described as a “watershed moment” in customer engagement.

“The introduction of video conferencing from multi-locations is a first for UK Private banking. Coutts is committed to providing an exceptional experience to all of its customers and we are constantly looking for anything that can make it easier and safer to bank with us. We were the first UK Private bank to launch transactional internet banking, and today we have raised the bar again, harnessing innovative technology to further enhance the industry-leading service on offer at this bank,” Joe Norburn, Head of Digital at Coutts commented.

Since launch, feedback from both clients and Coutts relationship managers about the value added by enabling these multi-party video meetings has been extremely positive, with very strong demand for the service to continue. OpenTok has helped Coutts deliver the level of service customers have come to expect from a private banker – regardless of location. Coutts can now deliver the same integrated service to a client traveling in Karachi for business as they would expect in their offices in London.

Coutts has set the standard for how banks will communicate with clients in the future, and in doing so has created a new customer service paradigm in an increasingly competitive banking world. Differentiating themselves from the crowd with innovation is something Coutts has prided itself on since its inception. By integrating WebRTC into their digital product, Coutts has created a truly compelling offering by delivering innovative and engaging customer service.

Learn how you can use the OpenTok Platform to make that possible today.